“Who is she?” he asked his friends. “She is pretty.”

They soon met and fell in love, and last year, they celebrated 40 years of marriage.

Since 1982, Brian and Karen have had many adventures in Lake Placid, not just running a business. They also became Adirondack 46ers together.

“It took us about 30 years to finish those mountains, between having four kids and starting the business,” Karen told the Lake Placid News in 2015.

This year, the Delaneys are celebrating the 40th anniversary of their family business, High Peaks Cyclery, located at 2733 Main St., Lake Placid.

Brian grew up in rural New Jersey.

“First in a farm community out by Clinton,” he said. “Then we moved to a smaller town closer to the ocean.”

As a kid, Brian loved the outdoors, and in college, he got a background on running a business.

“I worked at a bike shop, and in a pharmacy, and in a hardware store,” he said. “I learned about retail, business and about how much fun it was working with people.”

Karen grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. In a profile for the Lake Placid News in 2015, she said she took an instant liking to hiking, biking, skiing, swimming and running — and she wanted to do it all.

Delaney studied nursing at college, but a visit to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal changed her perspective on life.

“I realized that I like the Olympics,” she told the News in 2015. “I was thinking about a move because I wanted to live in a smaller, sport-type town, so I thought Lake Placid would be a good place to move. I had never been here, except for a kid vacation I took a long time ago, but I just thought Lake Placid would be fun.”

So Karen moved to the Adirondacks in 1980 when the Winter Olympics came to Lake Placid, taking a six-month leave of absence from her job as a nurse at an inner-city hospital in Detroit. She began working at the Placid Memorial Hospital and enjoyed skiing.

After their marriage in 1982, Brian and Karen moved to a small ski area outside of Syracuse, called the Toggenburg Mountain Ski Center. There, Brian became a manager and Karen worked in a ski shop. In 1983, the couple opened High Peaks Cyclery, an outdoor shop, in the round building on Saranac Avenue.

“We wanted to met needs within the community and knowing that we wanted help people with products and services that were needed at that time,” Brian said, adding that there weren’t many outdoor stores in Lake Placid at the time.

“Originally, we opened as a bicycle touring business,” Brian said. “In the 1980s, business was brisk because it was the end of the recession and people wanted to buy bikes, so we started selling more bikes and booking less tours.”

Later on in the winter, the store opened as a cross-country ski shop.

“Then we did bikes and cross-country skis and outdoor gear,” Brian said.

High Peaks Cyclery moved to its current location in 1992.

One of the challenges of running the store, according to Brian, is internet sales. When your looking to buy something online, “Your basically just shooting in the dark to buy something.”

Brian also said that what he enjoys most about running the store is helping people.

“Helping customers and all my product knowledge of 40 years of business experience,” he said.

Brian and Karen — both 67 years old — won’t be running the store forever. Instead, one of their sons, Matt Delaney, will be taking over. Brian has already been training and teaching Matt how to run the store.

“He’s moved back with his wife and he’s already working full time,” Brian said. “And he’s already developing things way better than I could.”

Under Matt’s management, Brian doesn’t expect that High Peaks Cyclery will look very different in the future.

“I think we will continue to met needs, stick with quality products and continue to help people,” Brian said.

It’s clear that Brian will not being retiring for a long time.

“All my friends that have retired are all working somewhere because they’re bored or they’re in rehab … or they’re injured because they’re overdoing it,” Brian said. “I like working here and helping. It’s fun. … We’ll slow down. Karen and I will do more adventuring and more traveling, and we love guiding.”

The Delaneys are very involved in the community and are always organizing and volunteering for many things — including the summertime mini-triathlon series at Mirror Lake, which begins on Monday, June 26 and runs until Aug. 14. This past winter, they set up the Scotts Cobble Nordic Ski Center at the Craig Wood Golf Course.

For more information about High Peaks Cyclery, visit www.highpeakscyclery.com.